Michael Avallone
Michael Angelo Avallone ( – ) was an American author of mystery, secret agent fiction, and novelizations of TV and films. His lifetime output was over 223 works (although he boasted over 1,000), published under his own name and seventeen pseudonyms. Biography The son of Michael Angelo Avallone, Sr,Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature, vol. 2, R. Reginald, 1979, pg 802 Avallone was born in New York City on and died in Los Angeles on . He was married in 1949 to Lucille Asero; they had one son before the marriage was dissolved. In 1960 he married Fran Weinstein, and together they had one son and one daughter. In addition to his writing, Avallone was a guest lecturer at New York University, Columbia University, and Rutgers University. Works His first novel, The Tall Dolores, published in 1953, introduced Ed Noon, P.I. The most recent installment was published in 1989. The final volume, Since Noon Yesterday, is, as of 2005, unpublished. Avallone has been prolific at writing movie and TV tie-ins, more than two dozen, beginning with 1963's The Main Attraction. His most successful tie-in was the first of the Man From U.N.C.L.E. tie-in novels, The Thousand Coffins Affair. Despite its success, ironically, Avallone said that he'd gotten a rotten deal from the publisher on the project. "I did it for a flat fee of $1,000 with a handshake deal to do the rest of the series," said Avallone in a 1989 interview. "Then Ace double-crossed everybody and they got follow-up writers to do the others. They sold it to 60 foreign countries, and it stayed in print until 1970. Every copy of the book says April, 1965—there's no record of a printing order or anything—but they had five printings in the first three months! Everything to worked right in The Thousand Coffins Affair and it sort of set the pattern for all kinds of TV spy books. I was very satisfied with it, and despite the monetary beating I took, it did get me a lot of work down through the years."Randall D. Larson, Films Into Books Metuchen, NY: Scarecrow Press, 1995, pp. 58-62 Avallone said he faced some minor editorial restrictions on the U.N.C.L.E. book, at the studio's insistence. The villainous organization of the book, Golgotha, was described by Avallone as being German. "MGM insisted on making them Russians—and of course this is 1964, the height of the Cold War," he said.Larson, p. 60 Due to his involvement in the tie-ins, the cover of the January 1967 issue of The Saint Magazine, edited by Leslie Charteris, erroneously identifies Avallone as the creator of the TV series. His tie-ins included Hawaii Five-O, Mannix, Friday the 13th Part III, Beneath the Planet of the Apes and even The Partridge Family. A series of novellas in the late 1960s featured the U.N.C.L.E.-like INTREX organization. Under the house name Nick Carter, he wrote some of the Nick Carter spy novels beginning in the 1960s. As Troy Conway, he wrote the tongue-in-cheek porn series Rod Damon: The Coxeman, and parodied The Man from U.N.C.L.E. from 1967 to 1973. He also wrote the novelization of the 1982 TV miniseries A Woman Called Golda, based on the life of Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir. Among his pseudonyms (male and female) were Mile Avalione, Mike Avalone, Nick Carter, Troy Conway, Priscilla Dalton, Mark Dane, Jeanne-Anne dePre, Dora Highland, Stuart Jason, Steve Michaels, Dorothea Nile, Edwina Noone, John Patrick, Vance Stanton, Sidney Stuart, Max Walker, and Lee Davis Willoughby. From 1962 to 1965, Avallone edited the Mystery Writers of America newsletter. Awards Avallone was inducted into the "New Jersey Literary Hall of Fame". He was nominated for the 1989 Anthony Award in the "Best Paperback Original" category for his novel High Noon at Midnight. References External links * ThrillingDetective.com biography * Category:1924 births Category:1999 deaths Category:20th-century American novelists Category:20th-century American writers Category:American mystery writers Category:American novelists Category:American short story writers Category:20th-century American short story writers Category:Pseudonymous writers